D&D General Demetrios1453 Plays the Gold Box Games

[Demetrios1453]

Pool of Radiance (Part 44): The Buccaneers' Base (Part 3) - Buccaneers' Base completed!

Faced with a large group, Brin will do what she can to thin their ranks.

Not an ideal center point, but it will still damage a good number of them.

Bragir follows with one of the few spells he has left.

That will get us a good sized group and hinder foes trying to get around that wall.

Brother Baltor gets in on the action, trying to take out some of the higher level foes immediately in front of the group.

All of this clears out a good number of them, but there are still a lot left, and now they start moving around and flanking - indeed, my group is basically surrounded by the end of the first round.

Time to break out the melee weapons.

And do some further crowd control.

Bragir pops off his last remaining spell.

Things are still a bit hairy, but we've managed to incapacitate quite a few.

(Note that one of the 30 HP foes succumbed to that last sleep spell, which was a pleasant surprise)

Totally out of spells and having several foes around him, Bragir pulls out his two-handed sword.

Brin, meanwhile, still has a few spells up her sleeve.

Time to take out some of those incapacitated foes...

It's nice to take out one of the foes with more HP in one shot like this...

Having noticed that the 30 HP buccaneers are susceptible to sleep, Brin casts it again.

The tide has definitely turned. Now the ones who aren't incapacitated decide discretion is the better part of valor and start running for the hills.

The ones who ran actually escape, as I'm far too busy dealing with the remaining leaders and the few remaining incapacitated mooks.

Bragir has moved down, and since he has fighter levels...

...he's mass murdering the sleeping foes.

Soon, we're down to just one leader, who still hadn't been hit up until this point. Baroness Bella hits him first, which leaves him open to something I've been wanting to do from the game's start...

OH YEAH! BACKSTAB, BABY!

It's so tough to set up, but it's sooooo satisfying when you pull one off. You have to hit a foe (and in PoR, it can only be a single-square foe) with one character, and then, in the same round, move your thief around to be exactly opposite the character that hit the first blow. It's hard to set up since if there are still a lot of foes around, they'll swarm your unfortunate thief, and there are no nifty withdraw moves a 1e thief can do. Beyond that, figuring out facing when icons in the game only have two positions (facing left or right) and when rounds end make it tough to get all the stars in alignment. But I got it here, and as a result this fight is finally over.

Let's see what loot this group had.

Uh... that's a lot of magical loot here. We're used to seeing maybe two or three magic items at most, and this one even continues on to another page! While this will become a common occurrence in later games, so much so that we'll just nonchalantly abandon mounds of magical loot because "they're only +2 items", we need to grab as much of it as possible now so we make a tidy profit. Unfortunately, all of them are +1 items, so there aren't any upgrades here.

The first thing we'll do is drop all that plate we had gathered up in the previous fights. Plate may sell for a tidy sum, but it will pale in comparison to this magical loot.

After rearranging inventory and dropping as many useless and/or cheap items as we can (no real need for my melee to have arrows!), we are still forced to leave a few items behind. I'm guessing that the magical chain will sell for more than the magical longswords, so they're what I'll be forced to leave behind.

Sadly, no.

Having gathered our treasure, we look around to see what else the buccaneers may throw at us.

Victory! And even better news, we gained have enough XP for someone to level!

(Also, the party took surprisingly little damage after four straight fights, with the last one being surrounded)

And, for Brother Baltor, that's as far as he will get in this particular game as cleric. The games in this series have level limits for each class, but, frustratingly, they're not all the same level for each class, nor are they near a common XP limit. Fighters and rogues can advance much higher than clerics and magic users:

So my magic-users are close to their limit as well, while Buffy and anyone with a fighter level (and paladin and ranger, since we're modding things a bit to allow them in this game) will still be able to advance for some time. Thank goodness for my multi-classes, or the cleric and magic-users would have hit their caps a while back! The good news is that XP is still tracked after hitting the cap, so they will (likely) be able to immediately level up once we're in Curse of the Azure Bonds. And thank goodness for GBC, since in the vanilla games, if characters had enough XP to gain 2 or more levels at the start of a new game, they would be able to gain only a single level, and then lose all XP beyond 1 XP below the next level (the games lessen the insult a bit by offering easy combats in the starter areas to gain enough XP to get that second new level, but you'll still have likely lost a significant amount of XP); GBC just lets you level up as far as you have XP for at the start of a new game.

Anyway, having leveled up, it's time to leave this den of iniquity behind.

Once you leave, the square basically is empty. As shown below, I had left the square with the base icon and then re-entered it, and nothing happens, not even a text saying it's abandoned.

Back to the boat, and back to Phlan!

First stop - the store. We have a stupendous amount of magic items to get rid of this time.

Aha! I was right! The magical chain does sell for more than the magical longswords.

After disposing of all the loot, and buying arrows (including for our melee who dropped theirs to pick up magical loot) our group funds are quite impressive indeed!

No need to even worry about the gems and jewels, we'll go buy our last fine longbow outright with cash!

Or funds are a bit worse for wear, but still quite impressive.

Next - off to see the City Clerk!

Trinkets?

That looks like it's going to be an impressive amount of trinkets!

Not bad.

"Trinkets" indeed?

The scrolls are, again, two copies of restoration each. We're going to need all this anti-undead stuff here very soon. Only the Zhent Outpost is between us and the graveyard now.

And, for now, that's it for the City Clerk. When we check for any new commissions:

So, we go to rest up, and then it will be time to go visit the Zhent Outpost. We'll start that adventure in the next post!

 

[Demetrios1453]

Maps for the Lizardman Keep and the Buccaneers' Base:

 

[Demetrios1453]

Pool of Radiance (Part 45): Outpost of Zhentil Keep (Part 1)

Time to go rest before we visit the Zhent Outpost.

Now at 6th level in cleric, Brother Baltor's memorized spell list is now quite impressive.

All rested up and spells memorized, time to head out to meet our new Zhent neighbors.

Off we go to the west once again.

(Something that could have been done a bit better, in my opinion. Our earlier overland expeditions were mixed between the east and central regions, while these last two, indeed literally the last two, are both to the west. You'd think they'd have mixed in the west a bit better with the other regions).

We leave the boat and head west, past the ruins of the buccaneers' base, and on across the grasslands, until the Zhent Outpost is nearly within sight. Then, suddenly...

Ooooh, quicklings! Definitely something different for an encounter this time...

By the time I'm even able to take a screenshot, several quicklings have zipped across the map towards the group. While the maximum normal movement rate for PC races is 12, quicklings get a movement of 96!

They also have an impressive AC of -3, which will make them especially hard to hit. But, with only 7 HP, they'll almost certainly go down in one shot once the characters land a hit.

There's no need to move towards them at all, I'll just set my melee on Guard and let them come to me.

Bragir is getting flanked by a couple, and takes a small bit of damage (they get several attacks per round, but even when they do hit, it's for pretty minimal damage). He pulls out his two-handed sword, and he and the others rapidly dispose of them.

The rest have moved forward, and we've quickly thinned their ranks. Soon the battle is over.

Even with no real treasure, they give nice XP.

(I'm quite happy to have encountered them - quicklings have always been a favorite of mine, probably due to first encountering them in this very game. Since they're just a random overland encounter, most POR games go by without bumping into them, and they aren't featured in any of the other Gold Box games).

We continue towards the Zhent Outpost, until we spy it off to the south...

We go up to the fort.

We say that we are, and are allowed into the fortress.

Once inside, we're given a quick tour.

Hmm... looks like we got stuck with a rejected Bond/Indiana Jones villain in this section. He no doubt speaks with a hammy German accent.

"No, Bond, I expect you to DINE!"

Well, sure, tour part 2 it is!

Note that he says they "can" hold, not that they "do" hold...

Is he getting paid for each use of the word "fine" and variants thereof?

I'm a bit skeptical. Surely the dragon would have just flown over the walls?

Well, they look very spartan. Just like every other room in the game.

We freshen up for dinner, including doing a quick Fix for the damage taken from the quicklings. It wasn't much, but it's always a good idea to go up to max in these situations. Plus, the commandant would probably think it uncouth if we bled all over his dinner.

We set up a rest for a few hours to pass the time until we're summoned to eat.

Sounds tasty!

We'll talk about magic for a bit.

"I'm curious if you have any insights about the object that gives its name to the game we're all in?'

Yet another intriguing story about the Pool and its resident fiend.

We decide to talk a bit about Phlan this time. He's obviously trying to pry information from us about the town, so we should best be on our guard.

Old.

Intriguing theory. Especially as we've never heard of this "Tirantikus" before.

We'll say there's been some trouble. That can hardly be news to even the Zhents by now.

Oh, quite strong! Quite strong indeed! So much so that a neighboring city-state well known for being expansionist and a haven for the worship of evil deities should never, ever think about attacking it.

We'll do our best in taking care of that, in the relatively near future.

At this point, it's probably for the best that we don't give out too much more info to the Zhents about Phlan. So we decide to go quiet.

I mean... surely we could have come up with other topics of conversation...

Oh well, back to our quarters for what should surely be a good night of uninterrupted, peaceful sleep!

Yeah, if it's suddenly giving us a choice to "sleep with a watch", we should probably take the game up on that offer...

Gasp! So unexpected! Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!

With only four of them, this should go quick. They were obviously planning on taking us by surprise.

Unfortunately, they had a back-up in case we weren't surprised.

That's a bit more impressive, but still not too much of a challenge at this level. We don't even waste spells on them (not just because they aren't worth it, but because we're about to go through a gauntlet of even tougher fights).

It doesn't take us long at all to start thinning their ranks...

And soon they are completely taken care of.

But these fights haven't gone unnoticed...

Time for our second break-out attempt in a row from a heavily manned fortress. We'll pick up at this point in the next post!

(And as for why we were treated cordially and then suddenly attacked, the game doesn't tell you outright, but the cluebook does: Cadorna had slipped in a note at the very end of the diplomatic correspondence proposing an alliance between himself and the Zhents, and to kill the party as a sign of their approval. So the Zhents didn't discover that until they had read through everything thoroughly, after they had treated us to dinner).

 

[Demetrios1453]

Pool of Radiance (Part 46): Outpost of Zhentil Keep (Part 2)

We head out of our quarters, into the chaos of the Zhent forces forming up to confront us. We move towards the front gates, but just as we get there...

Well, this won't be so tough. Eleven 4HP guards will be virtually no challenge at all, especially with my warrior-types sweeping...

At this point, we could walk out the gates directly in front of us, return to Phlan, and the mission would be considered completed. But what fun would there be in that? And beyond that, there's some nice treasure and XP available if we clear out this den of iniquity.

So, we stay and start moving around. It's not long before we meet the first wave of defenders. These waves will steadily increase in size and difficulty until we encounter the final two groups with the fortress' leaders.

So... Round 1!

Is this the best they could do?

It goes as quickly as you would think.

We wander around a bit more.

We're going to stay in this narrow walkway, which it will make it so that the ever-increasing number of foes will find it tough to outflank us.

Shortly thereafter...

Round 2!

This is a bit meatier than the previous fights, but still nothing that will give us any worry. Some of those in the back have crossbows, which periodically score a hit (but, thankfully, in 1e crossbows only did a ridiculously low 1d4 points of damage - Gygax must have hated and looked down upon them as much as medieval knights, despite the actual damage they were capable of!). Still, we mow through them rapidly, with my melee sweeping in the front and my ranged taking out the corporals in the back.

And we're done...

We walk a bit further forward, and then meet the next group.

Round 3!

Slightly larger group, same tactics.

We continue forward until we meet the next group:

Round 4!

The groups are getting larger, so for the sake of saving time and to reduce the number of crossbow bolts coming the party's way, Brin will throw out a sleep spell just to decrease the time between turns and to control the battlefield a bit. I'm saving my fireballs until the tougher fights later on.

Bragir joins in as well.

All those lovely "X"s are going to make this much easier.

And soon we're done...

We wandered to the edge of an open area for this battle, so we move back into the narrower walkway. A few steps beyond...

Round 5!

And this group is noticeably smaller, and with no corporals, which isn't how it should go. What's likely happened is that the foes were generated up against the wall, with the area to the south being inaccessible to the rest of the battlefield, so the game just generated what it could and dropped the rest. A lucky break! Nothing more but easily sweep-able 4 HP guards in this group.

It doesn't take us long at all to thin out their ranks considerably.

A couple towards the top break morale and start running. But unfortunately for them, it's hard to outrun arrows. A friend of mine once had a t-shirt that had a picture of a longbowman with text that said, "Go ahead and run, you'll just die tired." They die tired.

And the battle is soon over.

We move north, but before we can take a second step, things escalate.

Having cleared the preliminary waves of guards, we now face the first of the two groups led by the leaders of this fortress.

This is obviously going to be a bit tougher. Time to call in the artillery!

Decent damage for a 5d6 fireball, but any of those that make their saves will still be up.

We took a few down, but a lot made their saves. Luckily, that drops them to single digit HP. Also, my melee have been targeting Bant's cousin on the front line. Bant isn't mad that his cousin has joined the Zhents, just disappointed...

And down he goes.

Time to get things moving along faster, and to quiet down the guards in the back with crossbows, with a sleep spell.

The party quickly moves through all the wounded ones near the front, while again some in the back break morale and try to run.

And soon enough, they're all dead or have fled the battlefield.

While all the previous battles didn't have much XP, and just basic equipment for loot, this one looks to be a bit more lucrative.

Nothing much exciting there, just +1 equipment, and no one needs the gauntlets. They'll sell well, though.

But before we have time to think about that, a large group of Zhents appears from around the corner...

Time for the final battle! We'll start there in the next post!

 

[Demetrios1453]

Pool of Radiance (Part 47): Outpost of Zhentil Keep (Part 3) - Outpost of Zhentil Keep completed!

Time to finish this up!

This is obviously going to be a lot tougher. The Commandant has 100 HP, and he has a caster next to him. The rest we can just wear down.

Time for Brother Baltor to start taking out their leaders if possible.

He gets the spell off...

Well, that went poorly. Only a hapless corporal got held, while the Commandant and his wizard made their saves...

Well, if subtle means fail to work, it's time for brute force.

Except the enemy wizard goes while she's casting the spell, and, worse still, he has a a wand of lightning. It went by so fast that I didn't get a screenshot, but it's a bit lucky Brin is still standing as it bounced off the wall behind her and hit her twice. These games love bouncing lightning bolts off walls like that. So not only did Brin fail to cast her fireball, she's pretty badly wounded as well...

Bragir doesn't have any such flashy spells left, but he can still incapacitate foes...

Meanwhile, melee have been concentrating on the wizard, and Baroness Bella gets in the killing blow.

Then the Commandant goes, and he apparently has a javelin of lightning. Again a flash of lightning crosses the screen too quickly for me to get a good screenshot, but he hit poor Bragir pretty good. Both my magic-users are in poor shape now...

Brin tries yet again to get a fireball off.

While Brother Baltor tries again with hold person.

With much better results...

Now Brin successfully completes her casting of fireball...

20 points of damage. A bit above average for a 5d6 fireball, and it should take down quite a few of them, and seriously hurt the others in the radius.

Yep, that took a lot of them off the board. We've got plenty of held/sleeping foes, and quite a few are in single digits as well.

Shortly afterwards, it's auf Wiedersehen to the Commandant.

We've rapidly cleared out many of the others as well. There's a stubborn group of four up top who are still shooting at us with their crossbows, but as we take down the others, they begin to surrender.

And soon the battle is won, although definitely not with out some serious damage taken!

That's a nice XP reward. Presumably the late Commandant and his wizard had some nice items on them!

Indeed they did! Let's check out exactly what they are.

Well, Buffy picked it all up, and she can definitely use the better bracers and upgrade from her shortsword to that longsword. The magical plate will go to one of our melee (Baroness Bella has better plate from the buccaneer camp), but all of them have better shields than this one. Two rings of fire resistance are a great addition to my melee, and will allow a bit more flexibility when casting fireballs. That wand will be very useful for one of my magic users...

We'll trade Bant's banded mail to Brother Baltor.

And since Brin was the one hit by the wand, it's only fair to give it to her.

With the XP, Bant is ready to level up!

The big thing there is that he now gets 3 attacks every 2 rounds, which will increase his overall damage quite a bit. What will happen in combat is that he'll get 1 attack the first round and 2 attacks in the second, with the pattern repeating until the combat is over.

Also, he rather impressively has over 100 HP now.

Yet another den of iniquity destroyed.

Since we've vanquished our foes, it's safe to rest - and, man, do we need it!

We heal up and re-memorize spells.

And now it's time to head back towards Phlan.

Just to see what would happen, we try to re-enter after leaving.

Wow, they restocked up on soldiers quickly. We decide to just leave it be and head back to town.

We make good time, but then, just as we pass the old buccaneer base:

Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?

Brin decides to cast fireball.

Well, darn, that's at max distance. We'll get what we can, I guess.

When they move a bit closer, Bragir tries his luck...

The problem with fireball on overland map is that its radius is one square less than casting it indoors (thanks, esoteric 1e rules!), so I'll get all the snakes here, but just barely.

Some of the snakes get close. Seeing as they are venomous, and a failed save vs poison basically means insta-kill, I spend a few anxious moments until the party can take them down.

But, soon they are dead or slithering away.

Excitement over for now, we head to the boat to Phlan.

Well, isn't that bad timing? Sunset is at 14:00, at which point everything shuts down. We won't be able to get to the City Clerk or the stores before night falls. So, off to the inn we go...

We rest up and memorize spells. After resting, we'll visit the City Clerk for our reward (and other news!), but that will be in the next post, since I've hit the upload limit for this one.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Pool of Radiance (Part 48): Return to Podol Plaza (Part 1)

Having rested until morning, we head out of the inn to meet with the City Clerk

Heh, I imagine Cadorna had no problem making those bets, seeing as he had inside information!

Well, that's a nice amount of XP!

And some nice rewards!

Well, that's rather abrupt. She goes from joking about Cadorna not thinking we'd return quickly to telling us to kill him!

We go through the doors to meet with Lord Urslingen.

We're honored. Although it does sound like another suicide mission. Perhaps Cadorna isn't the only one worried about our growing power?

In any case, we have a new commission, although we still have the graveyard to deal with first.

Our business with the city council done, we head to the store to sell our loot.

I wonder if when he hears we've returned to town he has like an army of servants/hirelings dragging in bulging bags of platinum to pay for what we sell him?

Oh nice!

Wow, even nicer still!

Our current combined funds after selling off the loot:

Pity we don't have any more fine longbows to buy!

Since I haven't shown them in awhile, here are the character sheets for the party:

(Bant has well over twice the multi-classed characters' XP due to having an XP bonus for being single-classed. Baroness Bella should have this too, but I'm guessing it's not working correctly due to the paladin class being modded into the game. As you can see, the multi-class characters all have the same XP other than Brin, because, if you remember, she was unconscious for a single combat back in the Slums)

As I suggested it a bit ago, and didn't get any objections, I'm going to use the editor to change Bant's longsword into a battleaxe. This is actually a bit of a nerf since battleaxes only do 1d8 vs large creatures while longswords do 1d12 (which was probably the main use of a d12 back in 1e and 2e days). But it's nice to do so for role-playing purposes, since what self-respecting dwarf goes around using a longsword?

So to do this, we open the editor (which you have to get from the GBC website, as the Steam version of GBC doesn't have it)

We go to the upper right, and choose his longsword.

And use the dropdown to change the weapon to "Battle Axe"

But... that actually only changes its name on screen (which will come in handy in Pools of Darkness when someone decided, for no apparent reason, that battleaxes are two-handed - so I'll do a sneaky reversal of what we are doing here and re-name a longsword to battleaxe for Bant to use, and this time it will be doing 1d8/1d12 damage). To actually change it to a real battleaxe, we have to click in the section below the dropdown and change the Type. "36" is the number for longsword...

And "1" is the type for battleaxe, as it's the first weapon alphabetically in the list.

I hit "Apply item changes", and we have turned that longsword into a battleaxe!

We then hit "Apply changes" on the right, and go back to Bant's character sheet to see it updated in-game.

Well, that was certainly exciting. So, what to do now? We have commissions for the graveyard and the gate, but looking at the characters' XP, I notice that there are three of them very close to leveling up:

So, instead of doing one of the two tough commissions we currently have available, why not do something relatively easy to gain those levels? What we can do is clear Podol Plaza. We went there to observe the auction, which completed the mission we were given at the time, but there's also a reward if you clear the block afterwards. We didn't do so at point, since, as you will see, the battles there would have been a bit tough for lower-level characters. Now that the party is much more powerful, we'll head over there and clear the block by defeating 10 random encounters to complete this bonus mission. In any case, by clearing Podol Plaza, it will make it easier to get to Stojanow Gate here shortly, since we have to go through the former to get to the latter.

So, back through the gate and past the glares of the guards, who still apparently don't trust us.

Through the Slums and Kuto's Well we go...

Until we get to Podol Plaza.

What we will do is circle around the platform where the auction took place in the center of the block, and put on "Search", which will greatly increase our chance of running into a random encounter. Sure enough, we soon bump into some goblins.

We advance.

We advance again.

(This series of three screens happens for each encounter in the zone while we're doing this, so we'll skip it in the future)

We choose combat, of course.

While you are clearing this block, the game tells you exactly how many creatures you are fighting, which is nice, since all of them, as you can see, are in large groups.

Of course, even 31 goblins aren't any challenge to us. My warriors can sweep them, while the ranged take them out easily with their fine longbows. The only real issue is flanking, but we can take them out before that becomes more than a minor nuisance. It's not really worth even expending spell slots for them!

In fact, we take so many down so quickly that, even with a large number remaining, they start surrendering.

We move a few steps...

Yeah, 31 wasn't even near the maximum numbers you can meet up here. As you can see, this is why you wait until a bit later to clear this block - lower-level characters could potentially take some serious damage before clearing out this many, even if they are just goblins.

Again, we just sweep and fire our bows...

However, this group has some leaders, so our ranged are going to concentrate on them, since the leaders have bows themselves.

Again we wear them down. Once the leaders are taken out, they begin surrendering again...

And the battle is, again, quickly over.

Given our positioning, I realize that going clockwise around the auction block means that Brother Baltor is on the outside edge. By going counterclockwise, Bant would be on the outside edge, which will set him up nicely for sweeping (which Brother Baltor, as a ranger, doesn't get for some reason). So I reverse direction and begin marching around counterclockwise for this reason.

We'll pick up here next time (and I'll make sure to summarize these battles reasonably quickly, since it's mainly just marching around in a circle killing things).

In the meantime, since I couldn't fit it in the last post, here is the map of the Zhent Outpost: